


Heart Companion

by osprey_archer



Series: Soulbond [3]
Category: Frontier Wolf - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Community: trope_bingo, M/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-12
Updated: 2013-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-25 04:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/635158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Alexios could still feel that dreadful final twitch that Cunorix’s body gave before he died, and the suffocating weight in his own chest as the soulbond snapped back, like a rock in his lungs. He still could not get a deep breath.</i>
</p><p>A soulbond story. Or: what do you do when you've killed your own soulmate?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart Companion

Alexios lay in his sleeping cell, staring at the ceiling. He had not left his bed since they had reached Onnum. Someone should have complained about this breach of discipline, he thought: but he had killed his own soulmate, his heart companion, Cunorix, and no one had the heart to make him move when he had suffered something so cruel.

A fly buzzed. It seemed very loud in the silent room.

He almost wished they did. It seemed impossible to him to get out of bed, comb his hair, put on clothes, let alone try to lead his men; but perhaps the activity would force him away from that last moment when his eyes locked with Cunorix’s, and Cunorix could not look away.

He could still feel that dreadful final twitch that Cunorix’s body gave before he died, and the suffocating weight in his own chest as the soulbond snapped back, like a rock in his lungs. He still could not get a deep breath. 

The fly buzzed again.

Even now, his own breath sounded wrong to him. He should have stopped breathing when his blade slipped beneath Cunorix’s collarbone. Why had he not died in the battle following Cunorix’s death? It would have been proper and right. 

The buzz interrupted his thoughts again. Alexios opened his eyes, searching the air for the fly. He could not see it anywhere, but it buzzed on, and it maddened him, that he could not find the source –

There. The fly was in the ceiling corner: it had pulled itself free of a shred of cobweb, and walked now across the cracked empty ceiling.

It seemed almost drunk as it wove, a lonely dark speck on the vast ceiling expanse. Alexios looked at it, strangely drawn to its progress. Its wing was torn, he saw: that was why it stumbled. 

“I’m sorry,” Alexios told the fly. 

A knock on his doorframe. “Food,” said Hilarion, holding out a bowl of stew.

Alexios wondered, tiredly, how many times he would need to refuse to eat. “Hilarion,” he said. His voice rasped.

Above him, struggling across the ceiling, the fly buzzed.

“At least drink,” Hilarion said, holding out a cup of water. Alexios took it from him, and drank, and Hilarion set the stew next to him on the bed, as if the smell might tempt Alexios into eating, rather than make him feel vaguely sick.

Alexios wished Hilarion would go. But of course he did not want to leave the cup, and have to come back for it later.

The fly buzzed again.

 _Thwack_. Hilarion smacked the fly with his scarf. Alexios watched in horror as its crumpled body drifted to the floor of his sleeping cell. Hilarion lounged against the wall next to the bed, a tension in his posture that had not been there, before the flight from Castellum. 

“When I came in,” Hilarion asked casually. “You were not talking to Cunorix’s ghost?”

Alexios wanted to laugh. Sometimes soulmates did come back, if only for a breath to say goodbye. In the long empty weeks he had convalesced, Alexios had hoped for more than that: for sometimes a dead soulmate would invite the living one to follow.

But Cunorix would not be coming back: had surely passed the shores of Lethe by now. Perhaps it was not in his heart to forgive Alexios for killing Connla. Strong as a soulbond was, strong too were the bonds of blood.

And like the bonds of family, sometimes soulbonds brought little love with them. Perhaps Cunorix had felt their bond as a fetter by the time he died. Or before: for Cunorix had not come to his soulmate, but stayed with his wife Shula. 

But this was an old wound, and unfair to Cunorix: for Cunorix had told him that it was not done among the tribes to leave one’s wife for a soulmate. And even if it were, it would be too much to hope for a chieftain’s son to leave his place in the tribes and come to Castellum, even if pulled by a soulbond. 

And in that final fight, in the last moment when the soulbond seemed to hover in the air between their eyes, it had been Cunorix who could not look away. 

“Alexios?” Hilarion sounded concerned. Alexios wondered how terrible he must look that even laughing Hilarion was worried for him. “If he comes to you...I do not think we could blame you if you go with him. But I...but we all hope you will stay. The men miss their commander.”

 _They are all worried for me,_ thought Alexios, and the surprise of that thought roused him from his gloom. His own soulmate might be gone: but he was not, it seemed, entirely without friends, and the strangeness of that thought eased the weight in his chest.

He dragged in a deep breath. The smell of stew filled his mouth.

It did not smell good, but it did not make him gag; and he took the bowl shakily into his hands, and began to eat doggedly. He half finished it before he could not go on.

Hilarion took the bowl from Alexios. “I will be back with supper?” he said. 

“Yes,” said Alexios. “I will be here.”


End file.
